The iPhone 15 series just hit stores, but stories of popular phones are already circulating, and not in the way Apple had anticipated. High temperature reports from users (as well as members of the Android Authority team) focus on the more powerful iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max varieties, implying that the powerful new Apple A17 Pro chipset may be the culprit of overheating phones. However, we’ve heard stories of phones getting hot while charging, which seems unusual given its meager 20W maximum charging power over USB-C.
I took our iPhone 15 Pro (which we bought for testing and review) to the lab to find out what was wrong.
Apple’s A17 Pro chip is a problem
We took a temperature gun and recorded the maximum temperatures on the back of the phone during several workloads to see if there were any problems. For comparison, we ran the same tests on the Google Pixel 7 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, both with no cases, no background tasks, and plenty of time to cool down between runs. Let’s go straight to the conclusions.
Temperature tests on the iPhone 15 Pro
For starters, the iPhone 15 runs slightly hotter than the S23 Ultra and Pixel 7 Pro when performing common tasks like streaming video and online browsing. However, the margin is not so large that the phone is problematic for certain tasks. Staying below 30°C keeps you cool enough to go unnoticed.
With Geekbench 6, we see the same trend: Apple’s phone is 1°C or 2°C warmer than the competition but in the same ballpark. When performing difficult tasks, the iPhone 15 Pro is obviously warm to the touch, but not uncomfortable, and not significantly hotter than our two comparison points. The iPhone 15 Pro heats up between 2.5% and 5% on average in these tests, which may or may not be noticeable depending on what you’re doing.
However, as we head into more challenging seas with more SoC components, it becomes clear that the A17 Pro chip is a problem. When you turn on the six-core GPU, the heat soon increases. After five minutes of running the 3DMark Wild Life stress test, our iPhone 15 Pro reaches 40°C. Wait until the end of the 20 minutes and the phone’s maximum temperature of 47°C will be almost too high to sustain. The Galaxy S23 Ultra also performs poorly, but the iPhone 15 Pro is 5.7% hotter and any wearable device exceeding 50°C with any workload is worrying.
The most notable difference stands out in our 4K/60 video recording test. After just five minutes, the iPhone 15 Pro gets about 7°C hotter than the S23 Ultra and 4°C hotter than the Pixel 7 Pro, a phone that’s already well-known for overheating. Worse yet, after extending the test to 10 minutes, the iPhone 15 Pro far exceeds a reasonable degree of hand comfort.
In all of our tests, the iPhone 15 Pro consistently outperforms the Galaxy S23 Ultra and Pixel 7 Pro in terms of temperature. The margin is usually smaller, but the prevailing trend is that the more Apple’s latest silicon is pushed, the more visible this difference becomes. Clearly, accusations that the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are running hot are justified.
iPhone 15 USB-C charging also gets hot
So the iPhone 15 Pro looks pretty attractive overall, but what about the reported charging issues?
Unlike Android, iOS doesn’t provide a method to get reliable internal battery readings, so we’ve resorted to monitoring the maximum temperature of the external case. With this in mind, the battery’s operating temperature is likely to be between 2°C and 4°C higher than the values we obtained externally, depending on how efficient Apple’s cooling system is. We used an approved Apple 30W USB-C charger and the provided USB-C to USB-C cable to evaluate the iPhone 15 Pro’s charging capabilities.
iPhone 15 Pro power, temperature and charging time tests
The maximum case temperature reached 36.1°C (we measured an even higher 40.2°C on a Pro Max), indicating that the device is using power above Apple’s 20W limit. These phones have long been rumored to charge faster than Apple claims, and that appears to be true, but with a power cap imposed to keep temperatures at bay. If the Pro Max packs more power than the Pro, it could explain why we’ve seen even higher temperature claims elsewhere.
We did not use the phone during this charging test, but we observed temperatures above 40°C during web browsing and watching movies while charging the iPhone 15 Pro. If you perform any tasks while charging, the phone becomes unpleasant to handle . Apple tries to mitigate this by reducing the charging speed when the phone gets too hot. It dropped to 5W in extreme circumstances, which takes many hours to fill the phone.
The magnitude of the problem is demonstrated by comparing the external temperature of the iPhone 15 Pro with the internal battery data of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. Remember that Apple’s charging maxes out at around 20W, while the S23 Ultra can support up to 45W. Based on external temperature data, Samsung’s maximum internal temperature of 35.5°C is lower than from Apple, which we estimate reaches between 38°C and 40°C (this is often where other manufacturers limit temperatures). Additionally, our iPhone 15 Pro heated up much faster, indicating yet another issue with heat dissipation.
While our results aren’t as worrying as the temperatures found when stressing the A17 Pro processor, they are high, given the iPhone 15 Pro’s comparatively low power levels and slow charging speeds. It takes a harrowing 90 minutes to fill the phone .
Does the iPhone 15 get hot?
There is no doubt that the iPhone 15 Pro we tested is extremely hot, too hot. Even though, in theory, the phone’s A17 Pro processor has a manufacturing advantage over the competition we tested. It’s built on a more efficient 3nm TSMC node, as opposed to the 4nm of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 inside the Galaxy S23 Ultra and the 5nm of the Tensor G2 in the Pixel 7 Pro. However, it seems Apple took advantage of this advantage to boost additional performance (such as additional GPU core), which caused high temperatures when the processor is stressed.
Similarly, the phone’s charging metrics are disappointing compared to faster charging Android phones. Not only are speeds slow, but the phone is hot to the touch while charging, and internal temperatures are likely to be significantly higher, which bodes poorly for long-term battery life. The iPhone 15 Pro Max appears to be much worse in this regard, with higher power spikes causing even higher temperatures.
The end result is two phones that, while they don’t heat up constantly, can certainly be pushed to higher temperatures by the same customers Apple is targeting. Workloads that cause the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max to reach temperatures too high to maintain are more likely to be applied by gamers, multitaskers, and videographers. If you were planning on buying the latest iPhone, you might want to wait a little longer to see if Apple can fix this issue in an upcoming software update. If you already bought one, I would remove the case while charging and let the phone cool down after using demanding apps.
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Categories: Technology
Source: vtt.edu.vn